Abstract

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Adaptable Due Process

The requirements of procedural due process must adapt to our constantly changing world. Over thirty years have passed since the Supreme Court in Goldberg v. Kelly and Mathews v. Eldridge adopted what appears to be a dynamic, fact-intensive approach to determining the procedures required by the Due Process Clause. Federal, state, and local government agencies responded by establishing new procedural safeguards, many of which are virtually identical to those in use today. Yet, for public benefits programs such as welfare, the intervening decades have brought striking changes. The 1996 federal welfare law created new and powerful incentives to trim the rolls. Work requirements increased the proportion of recipients holding jobs, forcing many to choose between forgoing their due process rights and jeopardizing their employment by missing work to attend a hearing. Technological advances enabled welfare agencies to cut off benefits based on automated eligibility determinations that are difficult for recipients to challenge. Cuts in funding for legal services made the prospect of legal representation at fair hearings remote.

These new facts and circumstances undermine the effectiveness of existing procedures and may require reweighing the Mathews factors to determine what process is due to welfare recipients. Such changes are not unique to welfare; the facts and circumstances relevant to many of the procedural safeguards established since the due process revolution will evolve in the years to come, if they have not already. Although the Supreme Court has not addressed whether or how existing procedures should be adapted to such changes, adapting the demands of due process to new facts and circumstances is faithful to constitutional doctrine and necessary to ensure that existing procedures continue to provide due process of law. It also provides an opportunity to reinvigorate a conversation about procedural justice that went silent many years ago.